


with grace in all she offers

by dollsome



Category: Downton Abbey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-27
Updated: 2012-03-27
Packaged: 2017-11-02 14:09:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/pseuds/dollsome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are Lady Mary Crawley. Cold and careful, soulless and heartless. Selfish. Thorn-sharp to those who would stand in your way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with grace in all she offers

You are Lady Mary Crawley. Cold and careful, soulless and heartless. Selfish. Thorn-sharp to those who would stand in your way.  
  
In a way, you've been waiting for Lavinia Swire your entire life. Granny and Aunt Rosamund scheme and smirk and all but cackle like the wyrd sisters: how eager they are, to watch you do what you have always been meant to, to unleash a talent you no doubt inherited from them. You may be a woman, your battlefield a drawing room, your rival an unassuming English rose with a smile that is inconveniently sweet and true. That doesn't mean you won't go in for the kill to take back what is yours.  
  
You would have once. Edith will certainly attest to that, if asked.  
  
And yet it only makes you tired, tired and sad and a little ashamed, sitting at tea and listening to your aunt and grandmother plotting the ruin of the mousy and inferior Miss Swire. You think of the way her hair catches the light at the dinnertable, hovering sweetly somewhere between red and gold. Everything about her seems soft and inviting; if chamomile tea and May mornings could be shaped into a person, they would be Lavinia Swire. You don't wonder that Matthew has had the good sense to fall in love with her. You can't blame him a bit.  
  
+  
  
Perhaps it is the thought of Matthew that stays your hand. Your love of him: selflessness at last, and you don't even have anyone to show it off to. Matthew deserves a good girl, a kind girl like Lavinia after being dragged around by you every which way. He is living through hell; let him have his angel to think fondly of. To live for.  
  
And yet it isn’t only that. You wonder what you would have thought of her if you’d met her in any other world, one where she was not Matthew Crawley’s Inconvenient Fiancee first and foremost, and never mind any of the other facets of her soul. Those under the roof at Downton certainly don't. You imagine shaking hands with her, hearing her name for the first time from her lips. A few years ago, you would have thought her very dull.  
  
Now your standards have reinvented themselves. Now she seems quite wonderful. A treasure. The sort you'd want to call a friend, if you had any of those. You think you could tell her anything and she would take it to the grave. Let you cry on her shoulder. You are remarkably unacquainted with the shoulders of other people -- at least those that don't belong to the serving staff.  
  
Your mind keeps wandering back to the garden: Lavinia crying, saying things that no one says, especially not here. Empty polite lies don't come naturally to her. No one could doubt that she has a heart.  
  
+  
  
Perhaps you envy her.  
  
If you ever admitted it aloud (which you won't), of course everyone would think it had to do entirely with Matthew. You almost wish it did. It would be so much easier to recognize yourself, then.  
  
You wonder what she might see in you; perhaps you're softer in her eyes. You hope that she can feel it back -- this thing she's done to you.


End file.
